User blog:Kiwi tea/Review: Bridgeport by EA
Bridgeport Specs *c.83mb *82 lots (Res 45, Com 37, 2 completely empty) *Pre-populated with 67 Sims (not counting service/homeless). *For: The Sims 3 Late Night *Price: The Sims 3 Late Night expansion pack Overview Bridgeport is one of EA's ambitious, beautiful failures. In terms of its design - it's custom climate - it's a marvel. Unfortunately, beautiful worlds aren't worth very much if they're not very playable. Bridgeport combines terrible routing flubs and lots of elevators, making it not only horrible to navigate (on a busy lot an elevator can take in the region of two Sim hours to go between floors), but prone to bouts of crippling lag. Without some quite indepth technical fixes, this world is not worth choosing for long-term play unless you're quite patient. Bridgeport is a soaring, grim coastal city. The whole region feels of moss and pines, and a host of new rabbitholes allow a much more urban environment to take shape compared with previous towns like Twinbrook and Riverview. The most obvious additions with Bridgeport are the skyscraper and tenement shells. Creators can place these objects on lots and build lofty apartments - not very satisfying ones as only random homeless NPCs will ever live next door. Nevertheless, these objects provide the elevation necessary to make a city convincingly tall and, at night, bright. Bridgeport also provides CAW lovers with a very nice distant terrain object, a great fit for darker coastal worlds. If you look around Bridgeport you may notice some of the routing problems. For starters, paparazzi NPCs and also stray pets collect in holes in the routing paint above the city, causing increasing lag as they try to escape their perpetual captivity. They're not going anywhere, not without NRaas 'Reset Everything', which is only a temporary fix. More likely players will need to visit ellacharm3d's profile on ModtheSims and learn how to install her routing fixes from Bridgeport (and other EA worlds, although Bridgeport and Shang Simla seem to suffer from this issue most of all). If you've visited that link, you might also see that EA have failed to connect a few roads to their intersections in Bridgeport, and there's also one road built directly on top of another. It's a complete mess, and should be a source of shame to the EA world-building team. Bridgeport's custom climate ini and dds files have been the base for many atmospheric worlds, and I'd encourage users to extract them from the world file and check them out. Bridgeport is naturally a foggy world, with a dim grey coloured ocean. On its stormiest days the field of view is very limited due to fog. This works extremely well, and seems to be juxtaposed against the supposed glitz and glamour of the Late Night town. Some of the views on clear days are spectacular, excepting the game's horrible tendency to present the night sky and distant terrain with frank barring as if it were a DOS title from the mid-'90s. I shouldn't neglect to mention some of the key features for world builders that came with Bridgeport: Downtown worlds, food carts, and subways. Immediately there are problems with bringing these up. Two of these are locked for world builders by default - CAW does not allow players to assign the Downtown status to their worlds, and food carts are inaccessible unless modded. Subways don't even function fully for NPCs unless they are placed in worlds assigned as Downtown, so in reality they are all locked away. While the modding community has found ways around these issues, it's a damned shame they became issues in the first place - either by fault of poor design or poor decisions. I love Bridgeport. It's one of the most unique worlds for The Sims 3, and once ellacharm3d's fixes are applied, it's a great neighbourhood. However, I can't judge a world based on its merits when patched up by third parties. In that sense, it's still a great big fat fail for EA. Here are the screenshots: Features Showcase Bridgereview1.jpg|You'd have to have a heart of stone not to love this kind of view. The terrain really is stunning. Bridgereview2.jpg|The city separates convincingly into glitzy and rougher suburbs, with fantastic industrial assets like this crane and pier. Bridgereview3.jpg|A broad lane stretches through the city, unfortunately too short to make much of an impact. Bridgereview4.jpg|The visual distinction between rabbit holes and apartment shells is nil. They all blend together great. Bridgereview5.jpg|Some lovely flavour appears, like this scaffolding beside a building as if it's undergoing work. Bridgereview6.jpg|A charming butterfly park on the outskirts of town. I really like this lot. Bridgereview7.jpg|The houses of the rich and famous look out over the oceans. Really beautiful views, once again. Bridgereview8.jpg|Adding insult to the injury of a poorly-made world, EA locked away many key features from world builders. Bridgereview9.jpg|The terrain paint is blended carefully enough. It looks nice on the hills, and thought there's less blending in the distance you don't notice. Ratings ;Terrain - 10/10 Really majestic and beautiful, this should have been a jewel in EA's crown. ;Lots - 10/10 The lots are simple and all built well. The new rabbit holes fit right in among the towers. ;Sims - 9/10 The premade Sims in Bridgeport are some of EA's most endearing and memorable so far - outlandish Hip Hop artists, diva celebrities, and down-on-their-luck deadbeats. The city spins along well with its existing population. Not 10 because still pudding. ;Playability - 2/10 Not very good without ellacharm3d's help. EA made a real hash of things. Add to that all the inaccessible content, and it's not even very sastifying in terms of its sandbox offerings. ;Flavour Texts - 10/10 These are all very good, without typos, and they offer compelling characters. The lots also have charming descriptions. Links *Bridgeport Routing Fixes provided by the tireless efforts of ModtheSims user ellacharm3d. *Rabbithole lot sizes *Aligning Distant Terrain Category:Blog posts Category:Reviews